1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video surveillance system comprising a plurality of surveillance cameras and a surveillance terminal which browses pictures from the surveillance cameras, the video surveillance system automatically displaying the pictures from the plurality of cameras in accordance with the direction of moving of a tracking target and the camera installation state so that the surveyor will keep track of the tracking target.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in line with the support for IP networks by surveillance apparatus, development of a wide area surveillance system has been under way where a plurality of surveillance cameras are used to monitor a wide area as a single block. Such a surveillance camera reduces the workload of a surveyor in controlling a plurality of cameras by way of automatization of camera control and improvement of the interfaces of a surveillance terminal.
Concerning the automatization of camera control, there is known surveillance apparatus described in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-92751. According to the surveillance apparatus described in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-92751, it is possible to hand over surveillance to other surveillance cameras. This makes it possible to display a tracking target on a surveillance terminal without the operation of the user.
Concerning the interfaces of the surveillance terminal, the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 289607/1997 is disclosed. The surveillance system described in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 289607/1997 displays a map which shows the camera locations on the surveillance terminal for the surveyor to readily locate the camera locations.
According to the system equipped with the related art automatic tracking feature, in case the tracking target has moved outside the horizon of the camera performing surveillance, pictures on the surveillance terminal are automatically switched. Thus, it is difficult to readily understand the locations of newly displayed cameras with respect to those of the cameras displayed just before. Even when a map is displayed just like in the system described in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 289607/1997, the surveyor cannot readily understand the relationship between displayed picture and the camera icons on the map. Moreover, it is necessary to frequently move the line of sight between the map and the camera picture in order to check correspondence between the map contents and the camera locations. This increases the workload of the surveyor.